Gold Spot Price Open: $1,261
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,273
Change in Gold Spot Price: +$12
Silver Spot Price Open: $19.25
Silver Spot Price Close: $19.58
Change in Silver Spot Price: +$0.33
Gold and silver spot values received a lot of help from short-covering and safe-haven demand to finish the day at their highest points in nearly a month. When all was said and done, gold picked up about 12 dollars while silver was able to gain more than 30 cents.
The big story of the day is the flare up of violence in Northern Iraq. ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was reported as having taken over Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, earlier this morning. ISIS has, over the past week or more, taken control of a number of cities throughout the northern parts of the country. Now, with things deteriorating rapidly, the Iraqi government has called upon the US military for help, though it is widely expected that such help will not be provided.
As a result of the increased violence, safe-haven demand for gold and silver was seen across the market for the first time in more than a month or so. If things in Iraq continue to deteriorate, investors will look to the resulting safe-haven demand to provide metals with a boost. Also helping precious metals today was a higher number of weekly jobless claims in the United States. In addition to that, retail sales in the United States were reported as falling over the last few weeks. This also provided spot values with a bit of a lift.
As we look forward to the last day of the week and the weekend, the market’s primary focus will be on Iraq and the violence there. Though this is definitely more of a regional issue at present, the wider stability of Iraq stands the chance of being called into question should things continue as they have been over the past few days.
